


golden slumbers fill your eyes

by StormLeviosa



Series: Batfam Week 2020 [5]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily (DCU) Feels, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Duke Thomas-centric, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Gen, Gift Fic, Happy Ending, Hugs, Insecurity, Mentioned Damian Wayne, Overworking, Sleepiness, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, everyone in the batfam needs to sleep more, just let them rest, so many hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:20:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28526886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormLeviosa/pseuds/StormLeviosa
Summary: In which Duke needs to sleep, Damian needs to do his own work, and Bruce just has so much love for his kids it's not even a joke anymore.
Series: Batfam Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658641
Comments: 7
Kudos: 103





	golden slumbers fill your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This is a kinda belated holiday gift for Clark. Hope you like it!!

Duke Thomas - the Signal - was the daytime patrol, and he liked that just fine. It was, in a weird way, like an extra 9 to 5 job, one that involved a fair bit more violence than most, and a lot more physical exertion, but one that he could pack up at the end of the day nonetheless. He was not like the others, who spent all day pretending to be normal, and then spent their nights proving they weren’t. Duke Thomas had a normal sleep schedule, had hobbies that didn’t involve chucking himself off tall buildings for fun, and could separate his vigilante job from his more pressing job called ‘being a normal teenager’. That job was harder than it sounded.

The thing was, Duke was a meta-human living in Gotham. Duke was a meta-human  _ vigilante  _ living in Gotham. And Batman had, for as long as anyone could remember, had one hard and fast rule (there was a list of these Rules pinned up in the Batcave, and this one was listed as number 2, right below Rule number 1: No killing). That Rule was ‘no metas in Gotham.’ It applied to everyone - even Superman. So, by that logic, Duke was not allowed in Gotham. Obviously Duke  _ was  _ allowed in Gotham; it wasn’t  _ his  _ fault he had weird and/or super cool light powers after all and it wasn’t like Bruce could actually stop him or his powers from existing. Just, it was kind of weird to think about, that Duke was the exception to one of Batman’s longest held rules, that Bruce prized him over  _ Superman _ . He wasn’t sure he liked that. 

So, Duke worked hard. Sure, he had a sleep schedule and normal hobbies, and other stuff to do, but he had to make Bruce’s exception worth it. He had to prove himself worthy. He tried not to use his powers too much, at least not when Bruce would know about it, and did well in school, and helped Alfred out around the manor, and got on as well with Damian as anyone could. He snuck out for short patrols at lunch, and when he got alerts he made sure to be as quick and efficient as possible. He tried his hardest not to get hurt because that was just added pressure on an already strained system. When the others moaned about cases in the cave after a long night, when he was just about to head out for the morning, he’d offer to help out, and they never refused an extra helping hand. 

When he was just starting out, Duke and Bruce had sat down together and laid out some ground rules. School comes first. If you get in over your head, call for back-up. No hiding injuries. Keep the day cases and the night cases separate. He’d never really had any issues sticking to them. His job was, essentially, to keep his head down and be the ‘normal’ one so Bruce could focus on wrangling his other unruly offspring. He did well enough at school that it looked like he was taking it seriously and so Bruce did not check his attendance record, luckily for Duke. He rarely got in over his head because the nastiest criminals came out at night, but if he did, he never called for anyone and got himself out of trouble without any of them really knowing (his powers were useful sometimes at least). There was no point hiding injuries from Alfred: the man was like a bloodhound. Duke didn’t even try. 

The day cases and the night cases rule...well, that was a little harder.

Duke thought perhaps Bruce had made that rule to stop the others piling even more work onto their plates. All of them, Duke included, had a tendency to pick all the battles, rather than taking on a healthy workload, and Bruce understandably did not want Duke giving them even more opportunity to not sleep in favour of doing work. But Duke knew what he was doing now, and honestly? The day patrol did not involve nearly as much detective work as the night shift vigilantes did. Probably a good thing, all told, but it left him feeling a bit useless. So if Tim or Damian or Cass were struggling with a case, Duke would offer to help out. Sometimes Duke did actually have useful info from something he’d seen that day, often he was just a fresh set of eyes to look over data and prove that no, they hadn’t missed anything. Rarely, there was something there that Duke could follow up on the next day. This particular case of Damian’s was an exception.

Damian had asked Duke to keep it on the down low, because he didn’t want Bruce to know he’d struggled. Duke could sympathise. He tried to prove himself every single day and he knew Damian felt the same. Still, it was a Sunday, and he’d been out since before 8am, had a very brief lunch, and then kept on working until about 8pm, far later than he’d normally stay out. It was beginning to get dark, and he’d missed dinner, and Bruce had promised extra training that day before night patrol but Duke was late so that probably wasn’t going to happen. He’d actually finished his patrol two hours ago, but the follow up on Damian’s case had taken longer than the kid had promised him. Of course he couldn’t  _ tell  _ anyone that, because he was sworn to secrecy, but he’d make sure Damian knew, somehow. The follow up had been a bust anyway, no extra intel to show for the hours Duke had spent staking out the warehouse on fifth that Damian had  _ assured him  _ was the spot of a major drug trafficking operation. Two long, boring hours of sitting around, growing stiff, and cold, and tired. It was only 8pm, but Duke was ready to sleep. 

(Earlier in the day, a bored college student had shouted out the window ‘do a flip!’ and Duke had complied even before he realised he was doing it. The whoops and cheers had followed him into the evening, when he needed the mental boost. It was one of the advantages of daytime patrol.)

He got back to the cave and the others were all ready to leave. No training for him then. Duke couldn’t help but be relieved, though he knew he shouldn’t be. He dragged his feet through normal clocking out procedure, showering, reporting back, stowing the suit in his cubby, filling out case files, muffling a yawn behind his hand as he did so. Bruce noticed because of course he did. Of course it was Duke’s moment of weakness that he caught, in the moments before he left the cave.

“Make sure you get some rest, Duke,” was all he said, before the roar of the Batmobile drowned out all other noise and he was gone.

The cave was always unnervingly quiet when no one was in there. Duke kept tapping away at the computer and he could hear Alfred puttering about by the medbay, rolling bandages or whatever it was he was doing, but they did not speak and for the most part silence reigned. It was weird. Normally, Duke left when the others were still around and returned just as they were trooping down for a brief pre-patrol meeting. Normally, the cave was alive with chatter and hustle and bustle - because as much as Bruce would argue, he did have a child hoarding problem - and the cave might’ve been huge but with upwards of seven people in there it got a teensy bit cramped. Sometimes. A little. It was the good kind of cramped, though, the kind of cramped where everyone you love is together in one space and happy and laughing and warm. So, to be in the cave with no one else, to feel the silence and the space pressing in on him, was strange. Duke didn’t like it much. And he was still tired. And he still wanted to sleep. But he had a report to write and he had to write up notes on the useless stakeout for Damian and… and… 

He yawned again. God, he was so tired. The sooner he got this done, the sooner he could go to bed and sleep. He went back to typing. Slowly, achingly slowly, the report filled. He blinked. Urgh, he’d filled a whole line with As. His eyes were itchy with tiredness, and the light of the screen was irritating. He closed them, just for a second, just to give them a break…

* * *

When the Batmobile roared back into the cave, the first thing Bruce noticed was the light on over the Batcomputer. The second thing he noticed was that Alfred had a finger to his lips, telling him to be quiet. Then he saw Duke. He was fast asleep, cheek pressed into the desk in a position that was surely uncomfortable. Bruce frowned.

“I didn’t have the heart to wake him,” Alfred whispered, and he was right - Alfred was always right - poor Duke looked exhausted. Besides, it was bordering on 3am now, there were only a matter of hours before he’d have to be up again. Bruce weighed up the decision: let him continue sleeping, and wake up sore; or carry him to his room, and hope he didn’t wake up halfway there. Then Duke shifted in his sleep, the angle of his neck and back becoming even more crooked, and Bruce winced. The decision had been made for him. 

Duke was almost too big to carry, but Bruce did not take that as an excuse. To him, all of his kids were the perfect size to carry around, should they want or need him to take their weight, and Duke was no different. As he shifted Duke in his arms, Duke mumbled in his sleep and tucked his head into Bruce’s shoulder. It was ridiculously endearing, and Bruce had to fight back the soft smile that threatened to overtake his face. Then he realised no one was watching, and let the smile sneak across his lips and stay there. He climbed the stairs slowly, careful not to jostle his precious load, careful not to bump against anything or wake him up. They were almost back to Duke’s room when he wriggled, grunted, and Bruce felt him stiffen as he realised he was being carried.

“Go back to sleep, Duke,” Bruce told him, softly. He couldn’t see Duke’s face, but he felt him relax in his grip.

“Gotta finish the report,” Duke mumbled. It was a sleepy kind of mumble, made when the brain hasn’t quite connected to the mouth and the words blurred together into one amorphous blob.

“Tomorrow,” Bruce soothed, as he nudged the door open with his back. “For now, just sleep.” Duke had buried his head in Bruce’s shoulder again, and he felt him nod. 

“Damian can do his own stakeout next time,” he yawned, and Bruce chuckled. Of course that was why he was so tired. Always doing something for someone else.

“I’ll tell him that,” he said, as he wrapped the covers around him. Duke’s eyes fluttered closed and he tugged the duvet up to his chin. Bruce smiled, and headed towards the door. His own bed was calling, now that all his kids were asleep.

“Thanks, Bruce,” he heard Duke whisper into the dark.

“You have nothing to thank me for, son,” he whispered back.

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't know Duke very well so I hope I did him justice! We got some solid family fluff out of it though, so there's that.  
> Also I finally managed to fill another batfam week prompt? several months late? oh well 'day 5' is done at least.


End file.
